


Komeiji's Dinner Group

by ultimadragon88



Category: Touhou Project
Genre: A little angst?, Alternate Universe?, Cooking, First work - Freeform, Gen, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-12
Updated: 2015-03-12
Packaged: 2018-03-17 14:25:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3532691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ultimadragon88/pseuds/ultimadragon88
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You don't cook often...but maybe a shrine maiden and her friends were what you needed to?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Komeiji's Dinner Group

You didn’t cook often. You always made too much for one person to eat, yet only enough to feed a girl who didn’t eat as often as she should and a girl who ate enough for three oni and a cat who was far too picky and a crow who treated char like the sweetest sugar. For a girl who never ate anymore and a girl who didn’t even remember she could eat and a cat who was always working and a crow who was a _**god**_ now, not a crow.

 

For yourself and three people who had left you behind.

 

But your pets, the ones who aren’t youkai yet, refuse to eat anything else but your cooking, so you try. You make food for your pets, and sometimes you’ll make food for yourself. That’s where it all goes wrong and you’re suddenly on the ground, hugging yourself to make the tears stop.

 

It’s on one of those days when Reimu Hakurei walks back into your life. The shrine maiden, who claims to be impartial, crouches down and hugs you without a word or a question. No why, or how, or anything asked. Then she helps you up and asks to stay for dinner. You can do nothing but nod.

 

Reimu is like Rin, you later decide, after the third week in a row of her coming to your home for dinner.

 

She has a certain way she likes everything. Exactly three scoops of broth in her ramen, she even brings the right sized scoop from the shrine. Only fish and rice with her sushi, with the wasabi, ginger, and soy mixed together like concrete. Oddly enough, you find it comforting.

 

She’s different from Rin, at the same time. Rin would cry and whine and beg you to remake it if you made her tea just a degree too hot or cold. Reimu just sighs exasperatedly and drinks it anyway. She appreciates the effort that’s put it into it, at least. You still try to make it perfect regardless.

 

Eventually, the Red-White brings a Black-White to one of your irregular-regular get togethers. The witch brings her favourites with; strange mushrooms of all colours, bizarre concoctions and potions that you can’t even pronounce the names of (except for one that Marisa calls her “Badass-ifier”). She smiles brightly as you awkwardly try and incorporate them into tonight’s dish (mushroom takoyaki is surprisingly good, you later decide). 

 

Marisa is much like Utsuho in a way.

 

She likes her food charred and burnt, her mushrooms overcooked until they’re shriveled up and are more like a seasoning than anything else. But she also likes her food bright and colourful, so you always do your best to give her fresh vegetables and fruit to make it brighter. After years of taking care of your sister, Marisa’s lack of proper vitamins is obvious from one glance.

Later, you silently chuckle to yourself as you realize you’re turning into your mother.

 

Eventually, these odd little meet ups become regular, and not just with you cooking. Every Friday, the three of you go to one of the other’s for dinner. It alternates, of course. Reimu wouldn’t have it any other way; everyone equal and on a constant, perfect schedule.

 

Reimu’s cooking is just like her preference. Perfect. Perfectly cut, prepared, seasoned, cooked, and presented. But there’s something wrong with that perfectness. It’s too normal and regular. Everyone prepares the dishes like that, so it’s almost a boring type of perfection. You still smile and clean your plate, though. Perfectly clean.

 

And where Reimu is perfect, normal, and precise, Marisa is a hodgepodge, a mess, total chaos. Everything is burnt or undercooked, and it tastes like tar half the time. But it has a lot of character, you decide as you bite into what looks like a dry piece of chicken but was originally a fresh pepper.

 

Sometimes, though, things get mixed up, and instead of going to Marisa’s crowded home for dinner, she instead takes the two of you to Alice’s house. The puppeteer is nice, you suppose, if cavalier and withdrawn. Dinner with her is an interesting affair, with dolls serving tea and everything is beautifully prepared and presented...until you actually bite into the professional looking roast and find that looks definitely don’t indicate taste. From Reimu’s shocked blanch and Marisa’s raucous laughter, the sentiment is obviously shared.

 

But Alice is far from a regular, and it’s almost two months into this new routine until someone new enters the dynamic.

 

Mamizou Futatsuiwa is an interesting woman. Even your powers to read hearts can’t read through her trickery, it seems. Her tanuki tricks are annoying at best and malicious at worst.

But she means well, and somehow, after crashing a few of your meetings at Reimu and Marisa’s, joins the group.

 

She can’t host them at her house in Sado, so instead she commandeers a section of the Myouren Temple grounds for their meetings. It’s nice, and sometimes the other residents will come in and chat for a few minutes before going back to their duties.

 

Mamizou’s cooking is an experience. You can’t be sure if what you stick your fork into is what you’re really eating. It’s a surprise, but no matter what, the food is good, with a good dose of rustic, old world charm that only a tanuki could bring to the table.

 

You later learn that Mamizou appreciates trickery in her own food, so you do your best to ‘sabotage’ her portions as best you can. The large grin she gives you after she spits out her chicken and rice, which you had replaced the soy sauce in with tabasco, makes you want to grin back in return.

Most often, Murasa will join your get togethers, talking animatedly with Mamizou and sometimes glaring at you.

 

You don’t tell Nue you knew it was her from the start.

 

However, it eventually gets on your nerves, and you can’t hold it in.

 

\-------------------

 

“Excuse me, Murasa-san, would you come outside for a bit? There’s something I’d like to talk to you about.” She opens her mouth to argue, but you stop her with your usual demeanor, acting like you read her mind. “Yes, I know you don’t want the food your friend made for you to grow cold, but it’s important.” You don’t even give her a chance to respond, grabbing the not-a-ghost by the arm and dragging her outside. You swear you can hear Mamizou snickering behind you.

 

“Houjou-san, please remove the illusion. I’ve known it was you since you first came by.” At that, “Murasa” grows a pair of wings. One red, sharp, like metal, and the other blue, writhing, like tentacles. Her body soon follows suit, changing into her usual form of a black haired girl in a gothic dress.

 

But you know what lies beneath even this disguise. A woman who wanted to bring her son honor, and so turned into a fierce beast for him to slay. A woman who lost her only family.

 

A woman much like her.

 

“There. You happy, _**Satori?**_ ” She says your name as if it was the most vile curse word. You understand, of course. For her, a being who disguises even her own past in illusions, having someone like you, who can see through it with a single glance, is her worst nightmare.

 

“As happy as I can be. Now that this charade is over and done with, come in.” The dumb look on her face almost breaks your facade. “Yes, I’m inviting you in. No, it’s not a trap. And please, set up a rotation with Futatsuiwa-san. I have a feeling your food will be much better than hers...Minamoto-san.” With that, you turn around and walk back into the shrine, not having to look back to see the girl’s shocked expression.

 

\-------------------

 

You were far from wrong about Nue’s cooking. The girl cooked with the skill of a grandmother, used to her child’s bizarre tastes and knowledgeable about all the family recipes.

 

The fact that she was indeed a grandmother, and a great grandmother, and so on, was a fact that only you were privy to.

Without even asking, Nue had known Reimu’s preference for precisely two skewers of yakitori, with exactly four pieces of chicken breast to each skewer. She even knew of the Hakurei girl’s preferred cooking method, using first the tare sauce, and then adding the salt to it halfway through cooking.

 

She easily made Marisa’s yakitori in a similar manner to Reimu’s: exactly how she liked it. Marisa liked her yakitori grilled using hot sauce, rather than tare or salt, and with shishito between each chicken piece. All of it was lightly charred, of course.

 

You were disturbed to find out that she even knew how your mother made it for you. Enoki maki, except with shredded chicken replacing the mushrooms. She even made, much to your discomfort, your mother’s special “Koishi's Sauce”, an incredibly spicy replacement for the traditional tare that cleared one’s mind of anything except the flavor. It was your sister’s favourite for a reason…

 

You didn’t even see what old world style variation she had made for Mamizou before you had to leave the room with tears in your eyes.

 

\-------------------

 

You sat outside the door to the dining room, crouched down and holding yourself as you cried for at least ten minutes when you felt someone reach down and hug you tightly. You expected to see the black and white dress of the Hijiri monk, or the blue cowl of the Nyuudo girl.

 

When instead you saw your sister’s yellow shirt, your tears came out harder than before, but for entirely different reasons.

 

“Hey sis. I came back, like I promised.”

 

\-------------------

 

You cook a lot more than you used to, now.

 

You couldn’t make enough. Not enough for a girl who ate regularly again and a shrine maiden who refused to have her nikuman filled with anything but white curry and a witch who always asked for twice as much pork per bun (you always give her three times) as normal and a tanuki who will only have traditional nikuman (god forbid she have anything else) and a Nue who had to fight down the urge to take over cooking because she was a mother, damnit!

 

And definitely not enough for the girl who could now somehow eat more than four oni and her strange friend with the masks who liked everything as flavorful as you could make it.

 

There’s a knock on the kitchen door. When you walk over and open it, you’re surprised to be tackled by a crow and a cat. Well. Looks like you’ll have to make two more batches of nikuman.

 

Not that you mind, of course.


End file.
